Norway is arguably the most important country when it comes to the proliferation of black metal as a music, and as is to be expected many bands emerged from that time period. We all know and have heard the usual mentions (Darkthrone, Burzum, Mayhem), but what of the other bands like Fleurety, Manes, Ragnarok, Forgotten Woods, and In the Woods? Even bands like Arcturus and Dimmu whom some would consider second tier are more known, but what factors at the time prevented these bands from enjoying the same level of popularity. Did they just release their albums after the high had died down, or did the not offer as much as their countrymen? Why are they only known by the more underground listeners in metal, and seldom mentioned in comparison to the elites of the genre?

I think of all the subgenres of metal, black metal is the hardest to enjoy. It's a niche within a niche. Only a relatively small percentage of those who listen to metal at all are going to go out of their way to find black metal. So then you've got basically the founding bands, the big four of black metal, Immortal, Mayhem, Darkthrone and Burzum, and any bands that are willing to Nuclear Blastify themselves, which is not many. In fact Nuclear Blast has a grand total of 5 black metal bands signed at the moment (one of which is Immortal though).

To sum it up, I don't think enough people are interested in black metal for it to have tons of famous bands.

That's just plan not true, mate. Crazy talk. Black metal has tons of famous bands and tons of less known bands.

How about Aeternus or Windir? Pretty obvious choices beyond the usual names dropped from that scene.

The first bands will be the most known ones, for obvious reasons. But bands of the second/third wave like DB, Satyricon, Windir, etc are well known too. But its imposible to ask for 10 bands with same level of popularity like Immortal, for example.

It's almost shocking that even many people who know Ildjarn haven't heard Sort Vokter, they're an almost "famous" example of a band that only made a splash in the underground.

Another one that impressed the few who heard it but no more than that was Helheim aka the other Helheim aka The Helheim Society. The sounded a bit like a viking metal Mysticum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAuCNDw5tUs

Yep! So little known, but I personally like them much more than Mysticum.


In general, many people just dont dig deep enough and they are ok with listening only those few more well-known names, but I think many of those lesser known bands were re-discovered by more devoted listeners years later after they released their great albums, for example Ved buens ende

I have a couple that I can mention.

The first one is a band called Thornium and the album is Dominions of the Eclipse. It is a very solid, uber-kvlt release and if you can come across an original Necromantic Gallery press a very attractive one as well. As to why the band didn't reach a wider audience, I would say that they had a sound too similar to early Satyricon and thus their niche was already filled.

Second is the band Obtained Enslavement. Their first two albums are blazing perfection and essential for anyone who is a fan of symphonic bm. Their third album is decent but not near as good as the first two. If you are a collector all are worth seeking out, in particular a vinyl copy of Witchcraft (I am still looking for this if someone has one they want to sell please let me know). This band didn't hit it big because they are not as immediate as their closest competitors Emperor and Limbonic Art. It will take a few listens for even trained ears to appreciate the full genius of those first two albums.

Overall, I like the fact that there are so many unknown bands from the 90's black metal scene, not in just Norway. As a collector and listener, my two favorite genres of metal are the traditional 80's era (bands like Heavy load, Torch, Accept, Highway Chile, Grim Reaper, NWOBHM stuff) and 1990's black metal. Both genres are littered with a multitude of undiscovered gems. And while there are bands like Wolf who do their best to play in a style similar to past bands and make great records, nothing beats discovering a real one that was overlooked.

Antestor deserves a spot, I think some people just dismiss them for being Christians (and some of their albums being too bland) but they have released some of the best Black Metal I've ever heard

How can they be both too bland and release some of the best black metal you've heard?

Hades? Their 1994 debut Again Shall Be seems oddly forgotten for an album released during that year.

Kvist - For kunsten maa vi evig vike seems to be a quite overlooked album among BM fans (not in MA. the albums has over 10 reviews) here in my country and among other sites.

Thanks for reminding me of Rangarok. Haven't listened to them in years.

There are some major factors in popularity here. Both timing and proximity to the bands who started the whole thing are related. There's more or less a solid before/after point in Norway, which was De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in May 1994, for multiple reasons. There was quite a circle of guys feeding off of each other creatively and ideologically, and they really built their own thing while playing off of each other, some closer and others more loosely affiliated.

Darkthrone and Immortal were both very productive bands who had already established themselves with pro releases in 1991, and each put out a few albums that began to define the style from 92-94. Burzum's first four were recorded and coming out in the same era. Mayhem put out Deathcrush earlier than all them, were respected for that and the works leading up to DMDS.

-Dead killed himself in April, 1991.
-Churches started burning in 1992
-Euronymous was murdered and Varg arrested in August, 1993.
-Varg was convicted in May 1994.
-De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was also released in May 1994.

The bands who were already established and had albums distributed were certainly the biggest beneficiaries of all of this publicity. There were a lot fewer of them, and there would soon be a flood of black metal. There were some associated bands who sort of fell on the border, debuting in 1994 - Gorgoroth and Satyricon - who started at the right time and built themselves up in coming years. Other factors aside, absolutely nothing could match the publicity for a band who had a good album out at that point.

There's more to be said about the bands who came later and didn't achieve that legendary status, but that's another post to be made...

In 1995 and later, there was a lot more black metal. Not only were there lots of imitators, but it also became the favored contemporary medium for dramatic gothic bands, many of whom had been playing doom/death. With some overlap, bands and labels had different motivations before/after 1995. Think of black metal in 1996 and keyboards, vampires, and Last Episode come to mind. Not that other stuff didn't, but the floodgates were open.

So why didn't other bands gain the same level of infamy, or did they? Most of the bands mentioned in this thread put out only one album, went the avant-garde Norwegian Grammy Metal route, or got started a lot later. Perhaps the biggest difference is that none of them match up to the volume of Burzum, Darkthrone, and Immortal having four largely undisputed classics from the span of a few years. Some have a few good albums, but no black metal band has put out that type of quality and variety since, especially not in the same timeframe.

A few thoughts on some of the bands named:

Forgotten Woods - An amazing band, but there's a reason everyone favors either the first album or the EP. They were changing a lot and diverging as songwriters with The Curse of Mankind/Unlimited Hate. They're certainly not Forgotten, but became a sort of flagship of that niche that No Colours later delved into.

Hades - Perhaps the most appropriate band to ask "why were they forgotten?" I'm not really sure, they were very good and had a strong couple albums.

Kvist - Another great band, but they only put out one album then split up. I'd hardly call it forgotten, and it is quite well regarded. Earns a lot more regard than say, Fimbulwinter.

Antestor - Oh man, here's an easy example. They're just not that good. They were latecomers and the only distinct thing about the band was the gimmick. They did the "unreleased album" thing and it was just nothing at all special.

Aeternus - Their first two albums were excellent and thrived on imagination and this sort of wandering style where the interludes felt natural, a contrast to a lot of their contemporaries. After that, they just completely lost the magic - they kept a lot of their style, but it's just so clearly and universally regarded as a step down. It's not bad, it's just not captivating like it had been, and it was a sharp dropoff highlighted by an awful album cover.

Spot on on why Forgotten Woods didn't make it- they changed too damn much every time. Had they had went consistently year after year making albums with the style they had on their EP, then no doubt they would have at least had achieved the same status as Graveland I bet. That is a great example of a band who kept its head down and churned out albums (not only under that moniker) which is why they will always be remembered as a cornerstone of this type of music. Same could be said of a lot of the bands who only released one album.

Hades did continue after a name change to Hades Almighty. There are two reasons I suspect why they didn't become more popular:

1. Back in the old days and now still, band name makes a difference! How cool does "Emperor" sound? "Satyricon" sounds killer spoken and written. Likewise with "Darkthrone" , "Immortal", "Enslaved", maybe even "Ulver" and "Arcturus". You name your band some tag like "Hecate Enthroned" or "In the Woods" and you are asking to be passed over by someone thumbing through the racks for what is likely an impulse purchase in those days. "Hades" or even worse "Hades Almighty" does not have the logo readiness or catchciness of those other names IMO. This even makes me think of an idea for a new thread: "What band has the most killer name?"

2. Another thing Hades failed to do was make use of the "blastbeat" that was common but still VERY new at the time. The number one thing that set Darkthrone, for instance, apart from those who came before was drum sound. As scathing vocally as the Hades albums were, musically they were something that had been done before. You could not say that about pieces such as Battles in the North, Under a Funeral Moon, In the Nightside Eclipse, etc.

Hell, I remember how shocked I was back in those days to hear that drum sound. It took me forever to get used to. I used to worship Dave Lombardo, Vinnie Paul, Nick Menza, and Nicko McBrain as a young teen. If I remember correctly, it took a while for the Fenriz / Hellhammer / Frost style of drumming to take off and be fully established. Another great thread idea: "When did the "blastbeat" become common place?"

That's a good point about blast beats. I sometimes forget how big of a change that was, especially with everything nowadays completely oversaturated with them. Blast beats and great drummers were a big deal and a thing few extreme bands had in the mid 90s, before Nick Barker played in every single one of them. I remember when that was a big deal!

Hades is a pretty cool name, but I get the point. I think it more had to do with them sticking with their underground label (FMP) while others had bigger labels and distribution. I suppose FW is similar, with their label pressing 1000 copies of the first album.

The music wasn't right for the time, for sure. The mid-90s were not a good time for epic music, be it black/viking or heavy metal - Hades and Merciless put out great Bathory-inspired epic albums in 1994, and they were not well received, despite being really good albums. Even Bathory wasn't putting out an epic album in 1994!

Sorry if this post is a bit disjointed, it's late.

Good rec, thanks! My first thought on seeing this thread title was the other Helheim (the more famous one). I suppose 'forgotten' might be too strong a word but, for a band with such an excellent discography, I don't see them mentioned much.

As for why so many gems slipped through the cracks, it's possible that the fruitfulness of the scene worked against it in some ways. Maybe for a lot of more casual fans, there came a point where they heard about yet another norwegian bm band and just couldn't absorb it - they're already trying to keep up with 10-15 of them, and nationality is an easy way to identify and distinguish between artists you like. Maybe also there was (and is) a reaction to all the controversy surrounding Mayhem/Burzum/etc in the sense that fans ignore norwegian bm as all drama instead of great music.

I disagree completely with this. Yeah, it may not pull the crowds of traditional heavy metal, but I'd say it's on a par with thrash, death metal and pretty much every other subgenre (apart from whatever shitty -core is fashionable at the moment).

I always argue Windir was one of the most important bands to come out for their influence they had, they had one of the earliest sounds that evolved into the pagan/viking blackmetal stuff while also inforperating techo/rave music in some tracks like Journey to the end, and the only thought I have of a band coming close to doing that again is Diapsiqour.

Then going back to Dimmu, as successful as they became, their debut For all Tid has only been heard by a small percentage of fans. I consider it to be an amazing album that I think deserved more attention in the blackmetal comuntiy, as I do for Behemoths Sventavith (but that's for a topic about poland. . ).

I would say Kampfar as well, they have always sounded to me like if Finntroll covered windir songs, and I think that their sound is pretty important in the winter swamp blackmetal bands.

Some albums are really good, others not so much.

First black metal song I've ever heard - Kampfar, Hymne, EP version. Fuckin' epic. Didn't like the overly bouncy thing they did from their second EP on, or the more black metal stuff from when they came back from wherever they were hiding, the EP and debut album were the perfect mix.

Strid deserves a mention for being hugely influential on a small niche of black metal while almost completely unknown outside of it. Gehenna I think were simply forgotten because they made a bit of a wave with their early stuff and then quickly lost it, similar to Aeternus.

Oh, and easily forgotten because nothing world-changing, but once upon a time there was a band named Isvind releasing some rock-solid material.

Isvind's Dark Waters Stir rules, kind of like a mixture between Darkthrone and Immortal. Their 93-94 compilation CD has some good pre-album versions of the Dark Waters Stir stuff on it as well.

What I am into lately is all of the early Nagash material. If you have not heard you all should try Troll Drep De Kristne, Covenant In Times Before the Light, and Carpe Tenebrum Majestic Nothingness. The first two are pretty well known but maybe not the third. All are distinctly the product of this artist and have a great identity as a result. He had a knack for writing some foot-stomping groovy black metal with very catchy keyboard melodies as well.

Borknagar.

They've had enough connections with projects such as Ulver, Dimmu Borgir and Vintersorg but never seem to be mentioned before Enslaved would be (I get it, Enslaved and all). The Archaic Course for me is an almost flawless album and many others including Epic, Empiricism, the first two with Garm and much of their last two have been some top shelf releases. I feel they always fly under a lot of metalheads radars despite a diverse and distinct discography.

I agree with many of the other mentions such as In the Woods, Aeternus, Kampfar, Windir and others. One newer project I don't see much mention of anywhere is Skuggsjá. Some excellent atmospheres and there are certainly some blackened influences swirling under all the layers. Einar Selvik also was part of the Bak de Syv Fjell project that has an excellent 97 EP folks should check out if they have not already

Isvind's early demo stuff and debut are atmospheric gems, cheers.

I should mention another band who were formed at the end of the second wave: Svartsyn (the Norwegian one obviously). Very good black/doom with strong Burzum influences. Wish they were a little more notorious, cos you know, they were cool.

I dunno, I guess I'm part torn on what to consider "forgotten" or not because I'm not convinced some of these were actually "forgotten"? I dunno. When I see bands like Hades, Aeternus, and Kvist mentioned, at least for black metal fans with a more keen interest I'm not sure how much I'd classify them as forgotten. Hades' Again Shall Be is one of my favourite black metal releases of all-time, same with Aeternus' Beyond the Wandering Moon and Dark Sorcery EP and I definitely have known others with similar opinions. Not to mention Kvist's For kunsten again I feel like used to get a lot of appreciation when discussing with friends in the past also very into bm. So I guess I just wonder what to consider what's "forgotten" or not. At the same time, if a band never released more than demos, a couple EPs or a single full-length, or generally doesn't have much in their repertoire, people won't perpetually remain focused on that band, especially if they weren't genre-defining in a sense (thinking Hellhammer for example). As far as Fleurety, same thing, though I had indeed forgotten them but remember being pretty into Min tid maybe 12-ish years ago, but I think part of that "forgotten" factor comes from the fact they basically went to shit not long after. I think part of it is consistency as far as why some of the bands mentioned didn't reach the same popularity as others, but also marketing etc. playing a factor. Hades for example, I never really cared much about the music they made after their name change. If they had been able to keep that up then maybe things would have been different. Aeternus someone else mentioned they lost the magic and I agree, though to me I did find they obviously strayed too far from their sound, they gave up that atmosphere they had with the early stuff and that fucked them over.

there's tons of great forgotten stuff from norway.

demonic had a great demo (rereleased on mcd by necropolis) and a full-length that was not as good in my book.
mock had a great demo out too (got rereleaed as well). kinda pre-kampfar.
perished have an AMAZING debut album (kark). check it out if you don't know it. other stuff is not so good in my opinion.
incarnator demo is great as well.

then there's second-tier stuff like kvist, strid, mysticum, ildjarn, dodheimsgard, borknagar, old man's child, carpathian forest, early ancient, isvind, manes, gehenna, aeternus, obtained enslavement, keep of kalessin, malignant eternal and so forth. some of which are still going today.
weird one-off or side-projects like sort vokter, troll, covenant, fimbulwinter, gaahlskagg, trelldom, desekrator,... very vibrant and alive scene really. plus one of the best death metal albums in the world is from norway (molested full-length)

Not into the Mock demo, but cheers for mentioning because I love their EP. It's similar to the demo but like they got high on that Swedish fermented fish before making it.

Two symphonic black metal band that are forgotten now are Odium and Tartaros. Tartaros had really weird keyboard lines.

Tulus is another one. Pure black energy is not bad at all. The first Ancient album is great. Raw and atmospheric at the same time.

d'oh! of course I had the EP in mind, but somehow wrote of the demo. the EP is better for sure.

This!

Oh and Dies Irae were also worth listening to. Very special kind of symphonic black metal that's much akin to what Summoning would do later on. Vocals are total crap though.

Beyond Dawn.. on Adipocere and Candlelight labels, but light years away from any viking or black metal of the same era.

Ambient stuff with some trombone quite early on, also miles away from the Paradise Lost/ Anathema/ My Dying Bride/ Celestial Season school. No violins that I can remember of

I still love to listen to Looking for Scarlet Days from time to time.. Haven't followed on what they did after Pity Love; none of their albums post-1995 got any reviews on MA; so I suppose they're quite forgotten. No other reason but : they were too different.

And also, TNT. Obvious reason.. the genre became unpopular. I wonder what their 90s albums sound like. Did they try to find themselves, like many bands who started out at the same time ? Did they write acoustic ballads ?

deleted. I had the wrong country.

Yeah, Beyond Dawn really were something special. Essentially they started sounding a LOT like SWANS (White light era that is) after Pity Love, which is a great thing for my money. then they went and did a really bizarre sarcastic electro-pop album.

Although Malignant Eternal was already mentioned, I must mention them again.

Their full-length discography is really varied in style. I couldn't care less about the debut ("Tarnet" - yeah, it has that classic norwegian sympho black metal sound, but the over-emphasis on keys ruins the whole album) and the last album ("Alarm" - black metal Rammstein or whatever), but I urge everyone intersted in proggy black metal to check "Far Beneath the Sun". While it has un-typical song structures, it flows perfectly. Has melodies, catchy parts, beautiful acoustic passages, blast and sometimes melancholic atmosphere. This is prog black metal done right even before big bands in this style emerged (Enslaved). A real gem, check it out!

The Curse of Mankind is probably my favourite from them and it definitely outshines their debut album. And as for Merciless's Unbound sounding like Bathory? It sounds a lot more like Running Wild to me!

I favour neither, they're like apples or oranges. Honestly one of the few bands I consider amazing in two different sounds (albeit similar ones.)

Does anyone remember such bands as Carpathian Fullmoon, Algol, Forlorn?

Algol released one of the best black death metal records (Entering The Woods Enchantment) and disappeared without a trace.

Forlorn were one of the best viking metal projects with their first and second full-lengths.

I'd say Tulus. Pure black energy is one of the best Norwegian black metal albums but for some reason (probably the uncool band name or the cheesy cover) it never got the attention it deserved and still remains unknown to this day. I wouldn't even know about the existence of this band if it weren't for Khold (and of course metal-archives).

Please check out these two great Norwegian bands, Manitou and Witchhammer. Manitou plays power/prog metal and Witchhammer is a speed metal band. I know this is about black metal but these bands deserve your attention too.