The genesis of crimson frost
posted on 01 Feb 2006 under category History
It’s not like black metal is anything new to me. I remember buying Venom’s first live album when it was brand new. I’ve known Mercyful Fate and Bathory for years - I mean, what metalhead from the 80s doesn’t know about that bubbling undercurrent of bands who take the evil to the maximum extreme, creating that twisted, hideous beast we all know and love? Still, I was somewhat shocked when first hearing about all this wackiness from Scandinavia, the tales of burning churches and who-stabbed-who, and how they all supposedly had albums out as well. Being stuck in the US during its first big surge in the mid-90s made it hard to get some of the stuff, but before too long I had all the classics from Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum, and some weird french guys with band names like Mutiilation and Vlad Tepes and Brnexnoibewnivdauonoubhzavdsb…
And after hearing it, well, it made a strong impression. It wasn’t just talk and hype-antics. They could really make some strongly-affecting music. I pretty much had a handle on how to do epic metal, or thrash, or death metal, or your more cheesy radio/glam-type stuff, but to be able to make something this regressive, this raw, this minimalist? I thought it was an interesting challenge, and more than a challenge, it was something that I really could tap into and relate to. If I could do all that other stuff, couldn’t I do this too? After all, it’s not that hard to play…
… which is when I came up against the hard reality that just because something is easy to play does not mean that it is also easy to write.
Learning that simple fact did me worlds of good as a songwriter, but the trials and tribulations of dealing with learning that fact took their toll, both on me and on Rampage.
As they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Some of those more positively inclined towards present-day Rampage might agree with that assessment. I know I do. But it also reminds me of the old adage of the virtuoso violinist and his friend: the virtuoso has to give a concert that night, and his friend tagged along and watched from the sidestage as the virtuoso went out with his music and furiously sawed, fretted, and vibratoed his way through a set so rigorous he was sweating profusely and obviously totally drained and dead-tired by the end. As the virtuoso shambles weakly off stage his friend comes up to him and remarks “That performance looked very difficult.”
“Difficult?”, said the virtuoso in reply, “I wish it had been impossible!”
(I’ve tried my hand at doing some of this more modern black metal, figuring out songs from Darkthrone, Mayhem, Graveland, Burzum, Nargaroth, Mutiilation, but even after figuring out how to play the riffs this stuff is really hard to come up with - at least in any way that isn’t derivative.
Often, I think about the first days of heavy rock and heavy metal, marveling at how these guys came up with this stuff when none of it existed. I mean, someone nowadays, or even in the 80s, had 30 years of rock music to draw on, probably grew up listening to the stuff - but how did The Doors, the Beatles, The Stones, and bands like that, from that era, come up with rock when there was no rock beyond, say, Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Little Richard? That’s where vibe and attitude of the originators mixes with disparate musical influences of other music types that the people grew up on, and the mix of old pieces and new ideas and approaches is what makes the classics work. Hell, that’s probably what makes them ‘The Classics’. For metal, how do you get from Hendrix, Tull, and Elvis to Black Sabbath? Even then, when there was just Sabbath, how did Priest and Maiden and Rainbow and Mercyful Fate and The Scorpions [and VENOM!] get from something like Paranoid to something like Sad Wings, or Melissa, or Welcome to Hell?
It’s a similar jump up to that main Norse wave in the early 90s and the regional scenes in their immediate wake. I’m just born too late to get there. Still, I was born too late to get into the Bay area vibe, at least not until the tail end, but I think I can do stuff in that vein without too much trouble. Is there something special about Black Metal? Maybe what makes it really work is more from inside than in the riffs, or the song structures? Mysteries…)