Night is Indifferent
Minimalism As Weapons: Continuing the Look at Black Metal Punk
As stated in Part I of this series as in everything outside of actual interviews here; this is all my experience with this music, not a historical piece nor do I consider anything I say remotely to be gospel for everyone. Your mileage may vary, which you can share with your friends, not me. This is another long one, and I’m sure I cut some bands for length or because my memory is shit since I’m off (most) of my meds. There will be a part III at some point.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the various subgenres in both punk and metal and their places within each other, like a sad version of Voltron or maybe one of those iceberg graphs on those Youtube videos you guys watch 750k times for some reason. How different something like Discharge is from a band like Hatebreed (or both from say, Sum 41, which also gets classified as “punk” somehow). There’s a lot of that in black metal as well. Any “prime” genre, I guess.
What I’m getting at is there’s a whole world of hardcore punk infused black metal and vice versa, some of which is excellent, that I could go over but it would cause this piece to be even more long-winded and never-ending than it is now.
I used two dashes which means ChatGPT wrote this.
It’s difficult to look at the history of black metal and the merging of with punk without giving a listen to one of the nastiest (and greatest) albums in history: Sarcofago’s “INRI.” Or really most of the early Brazilian bands.
“INRI” sounds like falling down the stairs, repeatedly. Exquisitely primitive, Sarcofago have as much in common with early Discharge sonically as they do Venom/Hellhammer/Bathory etc. I came across them during my deep dive into the origins of black and death metal in 1998. They were fairly “obscure” at the time with a large portion of the metal fandom, outside of the obvious die hards who knew way more than the kids my age, per the usual rites of passage, so this was an exciting discovery.
This was the time where finding a bootleg Beherit shirt itself was a victory. Halcyon days. Someone will tell me I’m wrong. They can go fuck themselves.
I’d like to think that by now everyone reading this is at least passingly familiar with Sarcofago, the Cogumelo scene or at the very fucking least those first Sepultura records, so I don’t need to spend any more time on this. I just felt I neglected it in the first part.
Another, somewhat older entry into this list needs to be Leviathan, for a few different reasons and not just his cover of Black Flag’s “My War” but also his Ildjarn covers (“Dark December” and “Nocturnal Gathering” on the “Gathered Under the Banner of Strength and Anger: A Homage to Ildjarn” which I was asked to be on and stupidly declined) as well. Wrest came out of the punk scene of the 1980s and was one of the first artists to openly embrace punk as a musical foundation, especially in his earlier demos. I’d be absolutely remiss if I didn’t bring him up here.
Last piece I briefly mentioned Haat, who were one of the earliest practitioners of Ildjarn worship, incorporating the black metal punk influence into his other projects as well. He is possibly the most instrumental figure in ensuring Ildjarn is known by the modern scene the way that it is.
Onto the “modern” era.
It seems like the last few years, especially post-Covid, has seen a surge in bands either injecting Ildjarn directly or whose d-beat record collection is just as well worn as their Darkthrone records. This goes well beyond the Venom and Motörhead worship of bands like Gehennah, whose drunken thrash certainly touches Poison Idea territory, into the bands who are influenced by bands who were influenced by Ildjarn. There is a beautiful seriousness to these endeavors, authentically malicious creations, It’s going to be a fucking marathon to get through every one that I feel is important to the discussion.
The Russians seem to be doing alright with this style, especially those released by the Horrible Room label. Similar to the Korpsånd Circle bands in Denmark, the Pleskau Brethern Circle is a group of close knit, annonymous musicians who seem to swap in and out of each others projects and make up a large portion of what Horrible Room releases. While nearly all of the labels releases have something unique to offer, for the sake of space I’m going to focus on Крюкокрест, who seem to be the leading band within the Circle and my favorite black metal punk band next to Nyredolk, whom they share a lot of musical similarities with, especially on their debut full length, “Домовина”, one of the most violent records of the last decade. They managed to surpass this with their second record, the excellent “Ауфидерзейн”, a spralling and aurally diverse album spanning two records.
Their third full length, “Жестокость И Власть” is more of a stripped down affair and is one of this year’s best records.
Moving west a bit we return to Denmark and towards Hersker.
Hersker came onto the scene in 2022 with the excellent Nyredolk-seque “Befængt”, an EP that didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved. Utilizing the same blend of Ildjarn harshness, d-beats and caustic black metal as their aforementioned countryfolk, Hersker continued with a full length later that year and has returned this year with the (so far) digital-only “JordMord”, an even more antagonistic and violent expression. Hersker’s discography is augmented by Betændt, a project of powerviolence and recently been promoting Såret, a noisy somewhat experimental punk project which I’m going to go out on a limb and say is related. All of these are worth your time.
Last piece I mentioned the French label Croux, with very good reason. I wouldn’t call this a “metal” or “punk” label but rather it feels like an art collective’s musical arm. They release a broad spectrum of experimental and fucking wild artists but three fit into my spectrum for this piece: Somatic Anxiety, Vaurien and Fleckentarn.
Somatic Anxiety are a mix of Ildjarn, Rudimentary Peni’s early EPs and the bands in the Crass orbit in the early 80s. Grim degradation abound, this is one of those tapes that leaves you feeling dirtier for having experienced it.
When I used the word “wild” to describe the artists on Croux, Vaurien is who I most think of. Their earlier work is all excellent black-punk stomp with memorable riffs and a fucking crazed vocalist but 2025’s “Merveilleux décombres” takes that formula, puts it in a mist of reverb and then throws it off a tall roof. This is intensely ill sounding music that feels as though they’re barely holding themselves together. I’m sure some dickhead will say otherwise but I’ve rarely heard anything like this album, it’s an original for fucking sure.
Last year Fleckentarn released “Les mains pâles du chagrin” which is a mournful, almost pretty mixture of Ildjarn and “Pulver” era Lifelover. It was one of the records I missed in my year end list, which..well..fuck me I guess.
I mostly brought this one up because the project released a new full length this year, “Feu du Ciel, Feu de l'Esprit” and Jesus Christ what a shift in tone:
This is as close to a new Ildjarn record as we’re going to get (in 2025, at least). Harsh, primitve and exactly the kind of record I thought of when creating the thesis for this series.
A lot of you already seem familiar with Final Dose’s “Under the Eternal Shadow” LP and with good reason. Holding high the banner of traditional English crust dipped in the jet black waters of Scandinavian black metal, Final Dose have delivered an absolute crushing record. I’ll be writing about this more once we get to the whole “year end” ego parade but this is one of 2025’s must hear records.
One more to go, and it’s one of the best.
Rhode Island’s Prayer Position is one of my favorite active bands, regardless of genre. Their blend of harsh black metal and raging punk with more introspective sounding moments of acoustics and noise came together in one of the records that will make my Top 100 of all time list. This is one of those bands who are obviously in the Ildjarn lineage but have firmly grasped their trajectory by the fucking throat. I’m very excited to see where they land next.
I was going to cut it off at two parts, especially since this has kind of fucking fried my brain, but after sleeping for my customary three hours (fatherhood is just grand) I’ve decided to run a third and final part, which will be a bit smaller, focusing mostly on a few bands I’d cut from this as well as a bit on the continuing philisophical “issues” this subgenre seems to create amongst the more vocal in the community.