This OP is very much inspired by the great documentary that a lot of us have had the pleasure of viewing lately, One Man Metal. I've been checking out a few one man black metal bands myself lately, and being a musician myself, I feel a certain, 'honesty' or 'sincerity' within the pieces of a lot of these bands. It is not really a type of music that you would make for money, so that agenda can safely be ruled out, but instead I find that a lot of these musicians are portraying certain moods, atmospheres or feelings that they do feel genuinely about, hence all of the hard work and labor that goes into writing, recording, mixing and releasing your own black metal.

So how do you feel about one man black metal acts? are there any particular acts that you feel inclined to share with the rest of the board? I am particularly enjoying an artist called Elysian Blaze at the moment, his latest album specifically. There are some beautiful melodic parts within this album, and the musical passages flow together wonderfully. I am particularly enjoying the lyrics to the piece, Blood Geometry.

'' Staring at the sun waiting for the day
When oceans part their shores with a serenade
When mountains crack the earth for the world to show
That our souls are as cold as the falling snow

Begging at the moon praying for the night
When ghosts collect their flesh with a candlelight
When wolves gather the stones to remind us all
That our hearts are as blind as the rising wall''

So, feel free to share. We could all benefit from discovering new bands/musicians that have created BM that we enjoy.

I'm of the probably uninteresting opinion that it doesn't matter how many band members there, it just matters how good the music is. Some OMBM bands suck, and some full bands are great, and vice versa.

Also I'm not sure how any black metal musician can be in it for the money, one man band or not.

Certainly, I agree with your vice/verse point above.

And just to clarify, I meant BM as a whole is not something you would play for money, any type of BM that is. As opposed to playing pub rock for four nights of the week, or something such as that.

Bar the three musicians shown in the documentary other one man black metal bands I enjoy:

Burzum (not a surprise really...) is incredible. However I am not too fond of the more recent albums.
Svart is one of the best one man bm bands. Especially the debut album Vanära, Vanmakt och Avsmak.
Trist is also really good. definitely worth looking into the album Sebevražední andělé.
Kyla is one of Kim Carllson's bands. Only have one full length out called 'Glory of Negativity', I think it's brilliant (I am a bit of a Kim fanboy though).
Krohm is a brilliant band. Specifically their debut album.
Coldworld is quite good, not as good as the others, more ambient. Strikes me as very 'wintry' black metal.


Hope this helps people just discovering one man metal bands.

I also agree it doesn't matter how many members there are in the band but I personally find it really impressive if someone is talented enough to make such good music on their own. I am trying to learn guitar, I would love to have the talents to write and record my own music.

Elysian Blaze is indeed an awesome band, it's worth checking out all his releases.

Paysage D'Hiver is another favorite of mine, and while I don't generally like DSBM, Trist is really good too.

Care to elaborate Mike? I've checked out a little of Paysage D'Hiver myself, a few days ago actually, and I thought that it was quite atmospheric indeed. I really enjoyed the technique in which the riffs are played, the man can certainly pick his chords well.

Vladimir Cochet is a man behind a few solo projects, Weeping Birth and Unholy Matrimony being the two that I've heard and are quite great.

Weeping Birth is a mix of black and brutal death. Anosognosic Industry of the I, which is the only album I've heard, contains long, brutal and technical songs with eerie sounding samples used to compliment. The album spans over 70 minutes, so considering how much writing is packed into each song, the album is quite an impressive accomplishment. The only potential negative is the programmed drums, which can be exhaustive at times. However, after a few listens, this was no longer an issue for me and may even give it a slight industrial feel. Speaking of exhaustive, I can't imagine programming over 70 minutes of drums. Highly recommended.

Unholy Matrimony - Croire, Décroître is almost in the same vein, but is clearly a black metal album and I feel like the Anosognosic Industry of the I contains some slightly superior writing. I won't elaborate much further; if you enjoy one, you'll likely enjoy the other.


Yep, pretty much, but it does make things more impressive in some ways when it's just one person making the music. You also be more certain that the overall vision wasn't compromised when just one person has their hands on it.

I don't really care if it's one man, or fifteen man, black metal, as long as it sounds good to me.

With that said, Furze is probably one of my favourite black metal acts, period. Though the latter-day stuff is more "accessible" (but still probably equally weird - just weird in a doomy, Black Sabbath worship-way), it's not really black metal. Necromanzee Cogent is his best album, in my opinion, with Sathanas' Megalomania being the best track: http://youtu.be/GEPGDu6ou_I
Seems like you either love, or hate, his music though.

I'm in favor of one-man ANYTHING projects. I'm hoping more and more heavy metal bands pop up that are stylistically controlled by one tyrant, even if it takes session members to bang out an album. Stuff like High Spirits and Dawnbringer. I really love the purity of vision that a solo project can bring with it.

My favorite example of one-man black metal is, of course, the mighty Countess. Orlok has churned out a stupefying number of albums at this point, and has sustained quite a few changes in overall style and feel. There's nothing else that sounds like his band and I doubt there ever will be. It just couldn't properly exist outside of the one-man context.

While I love Leviathan and Lurker of Chalice, it would be interesting to see Wrest as a bassist on a band, he's my favorite bassist in all of metal.

For the past few months I've greatly enjoyed Dis Pater's three one-man projects, Midnight Odyssey, The Crevices Below, and Tempestuous Fall. In my opinion he currently making the most interesting music out of all the active one-man black projects. His ability to create such peaceful, beautiful, and atmospheric black metal with lyrics about death is just impressive.

I think the whole "one man black metal" thing is really cool and a breath of fresh air, in a way (I'm pretty much a OMM band, too). But I think it's kind of a phase, unfortunately. I think that post black metal and depressive suicidal black metal is really on an upswing right now in popularity, but it's still just a small little sect of black metal. So, even if it got really "popular", it's never gonna be huge in the metal scene as a whole.

And while I agree that it won't secure large sums of money, I don't think it's impossible. Look at Xasthur--he seems to be living off of it. lol

He played bass for Krieg on the album The Isolationist and on the split with Caina. Both are awesome releases!

Why is it a phase? Because it's been around for quite some time and Vice (or whothefuckever) decided to make a documentary about three "acts" that are relatively "hip" right now? Elaborate.

I'm sure the guy in Xasthur makes enough money off his music to buy a couple new guitar strings now and then.

The last 4 (maybe 5) releases from Blut Aus Nord has been one man, and they've been awesome. Other than that i don't really enjoy a lot of this kind of stuff. Xasthur for instance, yeah it's moody, grim and all but its just not a whole lot of fun to listen to, theres not a lot of songs and memorable/addictive qualities that make me want to come back for more.

Largely shit, IMO. Of course, it's a matter of taste, but all these bands tend towards a very introspective, meandering style that I was over a long time ago. I tends so much towards overwrought self-indulgence because there is no "brake" so to speak. No one else is there to enforce quality control. And consequentially, while there are tracks I love from one-man metal acts, there are seldom whole albums that stand up to intense scrutiny.

So we’ve started classifying bands and style of music after the amount of members now?

Ridiculous.

German band Licht Erlischt, quite "doomy". Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpNjF-RK9cE

I think it's a phase because everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. My definition of a "phase" in this case, is a subgenre gaining more than normal popularity for a short period of time. Not knocking one-man black metal, DSBM, or post-black metal, but that's just the way it is.

I have never been into black metal,or any kind of metal really.It has only been this type of music that has drawn me in.It just happens that they are one man bands,they must be doing something differently .I didn't know it was just a "phase" black metalers were going through.

During an interview Quorthon said that Bathory has sold more than one million records worldwide. That's obviously an extreme case (not many people can claim to create black metal!) but it's interesting to note. During the same interview he stated that he hasn't had to work since 1990 or something like that.

More on topic: I think one-man bands are great. When you listen to the music, you can feel the personality of the person involved in making it. The music is totally what that person wants to make at that point in his life. He has no other members of a band having an input in the music. To me, that's bravery, and it's great. At the end of the day, as someone said earlier, no one plays extreme metal to make money (I can probably count the number of successful black metal bands on one hand) so why conform to the expectations of the genre?

i think that is why one man bands stood out for me,its all concentrated on ones individual depression or hatred or whatever

All this talk of one man black metal and nobody mentions Mutiilation, Judas Iscariot, or Ildjarn! All three of them being big influences especially for Xasthur and Leviathan. There is no money to be earned playing "depressive black metal" or any other extreme metal really, its all done on a personal level to express oneself. Its such a niche genre and to be commercializeed it would only water it down to an uninspired level. Then we'd start seeing bands popping up everywhere forming "blackster" metal, oh wait...

Satanic Warmaster, Caina, Sapthuran, Wyqm, Judas Iscariot...

I'm surprised that absolutely no one mentioned Falkenbach. Sure, it's mainly just the first two that were properly rooted in black metal, but still.

I imagine not many are aware of solo Iranian female musician Ilkim Oulanem, who [until the recent style change] played melodic black metal.

The guy behind Hermóðr is my current idol of sorts, that dude has numerous solo DSBM projects and they're basically all good.

As mentioned, Licht Erlischt, Coldworld and Countess are talented solo black metal acts as well.

I just love this stuff - it's so interesting to hear one individual's passion in a dark, heavy context.

No. The title ''one man BM'' is used to denote the fact that a BM project consists of one person performing/programming the instruments within the musical compositions, a piece of information that some people consider interesting, such as myself. I'm not using the term to denote a supposed genre of music. If a BM band consists of one person, then it consists of one person. It isn't a hard concept to come to terms with, and is hardly ''ridiculous''.



Once again Jonpo, I'm more than impressed with your musical taste. Countess is a fucking great black metal band, well done on mentioning them.

EDIT: I'll include my thanks as well, you reminded me to listen to such mighty albums as The Book of The Heretic

Much of the BM I find most meaningful is from solo projects. I appreciate hearing a single musical personality develop over time, and I feel like the sheer amount of solitary time necessary to create the music affects the mindset of the artist and thus the final product. If music composed by a band through jamming and rehearsals is a sort of dialogue between the members, one-(wo)man projects are self-isolated interior dialogues. This might be a little romantic, but that's what I get when I listen to Judas Iscariot or Havohej - a one-way communication from someone who has chosen the hard path of self-isolation in order to express themselves, in a marginalized medium, in a way that is likely to be misunderstood or simply ignored.

Jute basically just put into words the thoughts I had in mind when I posted earlier. Very well said.

There is definitely something cool about the idea of a single person putting together an entire project, be it black metal or otherwise. Just in a kinda folkloric sense, too - it builds a cool image of one fucking headbanger against the goddamn world, writing and creating metal exactly how it forms in their mind. There isn't too much cooler than that. I'd like at some stage to do a solo project in a similar vein - I've had a few ideas that basically just exist outside of what I think anyone would want to play with me, from sludgy country to death n' roll and blackthrash.

The downside, of course, is that when only one person is involved, there is no one there to give another perspective. Kinda like watching Babylon 5 - sometimes, the ideas are great, other times not so good, but there is no filter because they go straight from the creator to out into the world.

Also, hadn't heard Dawnbringer before - holy hell is this amazing!

I feel that the music is more personal and channels emotion much more efficiently when it's a one man band. I can't imagine Leviathan's music being a combined effort.