Fire Turns Everything Black

My Trip Through USBM Pt I: The 1990s Pt II

I started to write with a lot more people once I decided to publicly release the Imperial “Endless Path” demo, due to urging from Ted at Dark Symphonies, who did a layout and a ton of distribution for me. I was also starting to travel for shows outside the usual Philadelphia stuff, which was mostly touring acts coming through venues like the Trocadero and Electric Factory. It was a pretty exciting time because I began to see the world outside of just Ocean City, NJ and connected to a burgeoning network of likeminds that, because of geopgraphy, were spread far and wide.

The biggest hub of this kind of activity came as the internet started growing from something people traded pixelated pictures of child porn into something that was in everyone’s home. The two places that had the most activity was AOL’s “Unholy Metal” chat room and IRC, which was the best place to talk to foreign bands. It was in “Unholy Metal” where I met a few people who would help get me further into what was going on around the country/world. The first was Joe Van Fossen, from Noctuary, who would go on to be one of the spearheads for American black metal in the mid/late 90s and would also be a longstanding collaborator with Krieg, as well as one of the best people I’ve ever gotten to know.

Noctuary were closer to the Swedish sound which I attribute to Van Fossen actually knowing how to play his instrument as well as growing up on Iron Maiden etc. “Where All Agony Prevails” was a huge demo for me, I played the fuck out of it for years.

Another person was Lance Gifford, who was doing “Ultima Comparatio” zine and gave me my first interview. Through his zine I found out about a lot of American bands (as well as European-Lance had very deep contacts) and labels. It was also loaded with signs towards other distros to dig into. While you can claim “Petrified” was the most important zine in America in the early 90s, “Ultima Comparatio” was probably the equvialent for the last few years of the decade.

I’d also discovered the Wild Rags catalog, which seemed to have every demo possible from all corners of the world as well as Elegy Records, Abyss, and Red Stream. The world began to get smaller, closer together but also opened up to a much larger one. These would be the places where I’d begin to collect the classics; Profanatica, Masochist, Enkil, Sorath, Havohej etc. But, more on that in a bit.

I met Mark from Enchanted Sorrow on AOL and traded demos. He was somewhat local to Noctuary so we all started loosely helping each other out, spreading each others tapes and what not. Their “Throne of Disgust” demo isn’t uploaded anywhere so I had to put up their unreleased 97 “demo” (which was actually their debut full length, again more later.) Enchanted Sorrow was good, but there was one song at the end of their demo that was a rehersal track (drum machine and all) that is one of the best fucking USBM songs I’d ever heard, but unfortunately it was the only thing in that sound they did.

I don’t remember where I heard Summon, probably one of the many Wild Rags orders I’d done, but their “Fire Turns Everything Black” demo and “Dark Descent of Fallen Souls” full length were on constant rotation at my house once I did.

Summon were one of the very early USBM bands that were creating the whole “American sound” on their terms. There’s enough of a (very old) death metal influence welded into their black metal that kept the music dirty, which as you’ll see in a bit, was the cornerstone for most of the American bands in the 90s. It’s probably one of the (many) reasons those outside the country felt we couldn’t have any “real” sort of black metal-oddly enough it would become the sort of style these same people would go fucking crazy for years later. Strange how that works. Keep in mind it wasn’t just us, but Canada, South America and Southeast Asia that injected this sort of filth into the music-all places that tended to get shit on until the turn of the century.

Through Wild Rags I picked up the Masochist stuff when I learned about the connection to Summon. Wind of the Black Mountains would come later, as Moribund Records began to really take a foothold in USBM, being one of the only labels that was actively releasing American bands.

Unfortunately I’ve had to sell my Masochist stuff off over the years, but Bestial Rape released a compilation of all of it that’ll eventually find it’s way to me. I tend to forget just how great this stuff (and the early Summon) was. Just really nasty black metal that ignored any kind of frilly misadventures.

I would travel to NYC in the summer of 1998 to go to the Impaled Nazarene show, but my main reason for doing so would be to see Summon and Abazagorath-both bands would outshine the headliner. I might be misremembering, because a bunch of these NYC shows kind of run together for me, but I was seeing someone in the city and completely ditched her to pester Summon about how great they were. The relationship did not last very long, but the Summon guys were very cool to a chattering 19 year old with poor social boundaries.

The best of the Mascohist related bands was Wind of the Black Mountains, whose “Force Fed Unto Blasphemy” 7 inch found it’s way into my collection sometime in 97 or so.

WotBM was more Bathory worship than death metal-y. This 7 inch and their “Sing Thou Unholy Servants” would become mainstays on my radio show during the later 90s.

Krieg was ready to do a full length, ready being a very loose definition, and Mark from Enchanted Sorrow and Lance Gifford decided to start a label, “Unholy Records” if I’m remembering it right. Krieg would be their first release. It went sideways very quickly but because of it I’d still end up recording “Rise of the Imperial Hordes” and Ted from Dark Symphonies would decide to create a label dedicated to the US underground: Blood Fire Death. The lineup would be Krieg, Centuries of Deception (side project of Mark/Atrox from Enchanted Sorrow) Noctuary and Enchanted Sorrow. Only two of these would see release through the label before Ted stepped away. Noctuary would find a home through Lost Disciple Records and Enchanted Sorrow’s record was never properly released, neither was Centuries of Deception’s follow up-which was far better than the mCD.

Centuries of Deception was a project that, if released just a few years later or was from anywhere but the US, would have had a much deeper impact than it did.

Through my recording of the first Krieg I was introduced to the Philly scene, as the guy who recorded it (Jim Forbes, brother of Metal Core Zine’s Chris) called in favors to get some session help. I would meet Bloodstorm and the adjacent bands: Perverseraph and Namtaru, through this. All three were excellent, but Perverseraph stood out the most to me.

An absolute crusher of a demo, Voivod meets Profanatica, Perverseraph were the catalyst for me to start a distro, which was only to sell demos. I called it “The Gate” after the second demo of Ember. Let’s talk about them real quick:

I’d picked up Ember’s first demo, “Within the Realm of the Snowqueen” after hearing them on some comp, maybe the Impure Creations 3cd set..I don’t remember. It was stark, intense and the vocals were wild. Their second demo, “The Gate” was even better. Then their singer did the reverse of what half of America would do in the late 00s: abandoned black metal for hardcore. I would see them once, at Milwaukee Metalfest, and yelled out for an old song which the singer, barefoot dancing on a carpet he brought, addressed me directly with “no.” While his stylistic change was jarring, I would grow to understand it when I got older. Not the barefoot on the carpet thing, though. Ember would do another recording after this and release a comp in 99 with everything on it and then vanish. This would be a great one for someone to do on vinyl, Ember were always very underappreciated but they were fucking great.

Through my “Ultima Comparatio” interview as well as online activity I started trading with more and more bands in the States. Two of the standout demos that were sent my way were from Texas: Averse Sefira and Thornspawn.

Averse Sefira were a bit like Enchanted Sorrow at the beginning: two piece, with a drum machine playing a bit more of a European style, though there was a lot of old American death metal at the core as well. They had a fully developed concept from the start, more of a thinking man’s kind of black metal, and would go on to do some very inventive records over the next decade. I was really impressed with this demo, it just had something special to it.

Thornspawn, named after the Isengard song, were the epitome of the “American sound” of the 1990s: Necrovore-esque death metal mixed with unrelenting black metal. They fit in well with stuff like Bloodstorm etc, just barbaric stuff. It was enough that my friend HC and I decided to form a record label, Profanation Records, which would release their first 7 inch in 1999, right before the second Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child fest.

I’d also gotten into Hemlock, for a rather silly reason: when their “Crush the Race of God” record came out, I started reading people being upset because Balth, their bassist, turned out to be Danny Lilker from SOD, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax etc etc. There was always something contrarian in me to these kinds of opinions, probably leftover from my rather lukewarm reception from the people saying them, so I picked it up at my first chance.

It was brilliant. Hemlock’s debut is one of the finest black metal records of all time, for me anyway. I would get the chance to meet them and they were the real fucking deal. Caustic, sarcastic, highly opinionated violent men (well, except for Danny, he’s always been lovely) who did not like what was going on around them, did not care about any idea of an American “scene” and were making filthy music for themselves that Head Not Found was good enough to release.

We’ll talk more about them, the Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child and how America began to strike into Europe in the next one.