Bathory‘s Under the Sign of the Black Mark turned turned thirty years old last month. The album marked the start of Quorthon adding in the epic atmosphere of Manowar and Iron Maiden which would come to fruition on Blood Fire Death. Under the Sign of the Black Mark also happened to be one of the first black metal CDs I ever purchased, which I preceded to play non-stop for about a week until getting bored of it and going back to listening to Altars of Madness.
Under the Sign of the Black Mark saw Quorthon regress from the black metal song structures of The Return……, themselves a linearized version of the riff mazes of Mercyful Fate and Slayer‘s Hell Awaits, into simpler ones reminiscent more of heavy and speed metal that were almost like a simplified, less progressive version of Motorhead. Songs featured distinct verse and chorus riffs that Quorthon’s harshly sung vocals followed in heavy metal style. Like most heavy metal, the songs were too repetitive for repeated listening without boredom resulting. The initial luster and awe wore off Under the Sign of a Black Mark in a few spins unlike Bathory and The Return…….
Bathory’s third work was a surface-level metal album only good for for revisiting every couple of years, not for repeatedly playing and critically listening to until you escape your own desires and become a pure, will-less subject of knowing to the music and can truly comprehend the music’s beauty as Schopenhauer would say. No, Under the Sign of the Black Mark was a work that revealed its makers intentions all too soon. Quorthon’s genius was in composing a black metal to lure mainstream metal fans into the underground but doing so left earlier fans of Bathory, Possessed, Slayer, and Mercyful Fate wanting for more depth and less repetition after the initial few listens. Under the Sign of the Black Mark merely aroused the desire to listen to Bathory’s earlier, better material in them. Creating wanton desire is charming and what is charming is no different from what is pornographic in that it leaves the viewer or listener wanting something else whether a puppy of their own, a sexual partner, or a less superficial black metal album such as The Return…… or Ritual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdj4FgcjrDI
Tags: anniversary, arthur schopenhauer, Bathory, Black Metal, charmimg, Heavy Metal, quorthon, Speed Metal, Under the Sign of the Black Mark
Call from the grave and the “born child of the underworld” song sound like party rock, but everything Master’s Hammer has done is lame.
Daniel Maarat – Altars of Madness > Under the Sign of the Black Mark= 1990s death metaller
others – Under the Sign of the Black Mark > Altars of Madness = 1980s true metalhead
Really it’s The Return > Under the Sign
Yeah.
The self-titled established the style, The Return… made it great, then it was time to give it more depth, but that did not happen until Blood, Fire, Death which also tried to work in heavy metal and speed metal, with varying degrees of success. After that, the band went back to its roots somewhat with Hammerheart, and after that launched on a quest for a metal sound outside of the underground. There is great stuff on every Bathory album, but Under The Sign Of The Black Mark has never been inspirational except to the same people who idolize Venom and the less interesting Blasphemy tracks.
The Return seems to be the only Bathory album which doesn’t entirely suffer from “Now, that was sort-of nice, but what was the point of it?”. There are still to many “here comes the guitar solo” guitar solos and too many simplistic riffs repeated for too long. The vocals are the only really interesting thing and even these suffer from over-demonstrativeness and lack of passion. This obviously influenced both Euronymous and Dead but falls far short of both.
Link which has to go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSiJCX5Ly3c
This is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever read.
Appreciation of Bathory is not as universal as some people believe it to be:
http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/2010_interview_guitar_world.shtml, emphasis added
As Vikernes has a prolific ‘web existence’, quotes from him (Why do people love ‘authorities’ so much?) are easy to find. There’s also some video on youtube describing Per Ohlin attending a Bathory/ Quorthon event and being very disappointed about the rockstar-styled, leather jacket wearing, victory-sign gesturing person which showed up.
The quote above continues with
and that’s really the great weakeness of all these “1 guy” projects: They’re all 1-D, static, ‘dead’ so to say.
Higher quality of perception and analysis should be honored. If one cannot do better, defer to the subject matter expert.
He needs to be reformatted.
You have shit in your ears
In what respect was Hammerheart a return to roots?
wondering this as well
They don’t sound like Venom any longer, so I don’t like it.
Please don’t keep reminding me of how old i’m getting.
Cool story, Peter Pan.