The eternal return of First Wave Black Metal
Was “First Wave Black Metal” (FWBM) a genuine subgenre of metal, or merely a revisionist label devised to group together the disparate roots of modern black metal?
This topic has been debated endlessly. I think that with authoritative sources like Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult by Dayal Patterson, Slayer Mag Diaries by Metalion and Tara G. Warrior, along with numerous other articles, videos, and raw evidence from 1980s zines, there’s more than enough to confirm that early black metal was indeed a thing — and an awesome one, by the way. While some view it as an offshoot of thrash, it is more accurately understood as an extreme form of speed metal — arguably the first form of extreme metal — rooted in Motörhead and Venom rather than the slightly later thrash movement.
"Our music is Power Metal, Venom Metal, Black Metal not Heavy Metal cos that's for the chicks. Satan is power and Venom is power so we write about Satan."
Yet, I still come across, in the murkier corners of the internet and in videos on the topic, the occasional troll claiming it wasn’t — that everything began with Norwegian black metal. Even some more, let’s say, influential figures have repeated this idea. So I think it’s worth revisiting the question and trying to explain why this controversy still lingers.
I think one of the reasons for this confusion is that current explanations haven’t really put their finger on what FWBM actually is. Some say it was an “era”, not a genre. Others call it a “proto–subgenre”. Metalion described it as a “trend of satanic metal”, which began to fade during the second half of the ’80s with the rise of thrash and death metal. But none of these definitions are clearly outlined, and there’s no agreement on a single concept of what FWBM really means. Some argue that the shared theme of satanism was the only common denominator, while others emphasize a certain dark atmosphere and raw quality that foreshadowed the black metal yet to come. Still, that remains vague and doesn’t offer a clear demarcation — which is why there are still cracks for criticism to emerge.
In my personal opinion, the weakest definition of them all — and a perfect example of why these explanations fall short — is the claim that FWBM was simply an “era”. What the f… does that even mean? You’d first have to define what an era is in this specific context, otherwise it’s just an empty word that leaves you right where you started. Is it an era like the Renaissance? Or like how pop culture divides things by decades? Yeah, right… “The dark aeon of mighty, primordial black metal!” Sounds cool, but it doesn’t solve the problem at all.
“Those who use undefined terms to define the undefined, shall never grasp the invisible orange of first wave black metal. - Socrates circa 1000 BC”
This leaves us with what we should be looking at in the first place: musical categories. You have genres, subgenres, styles, scenes, waves, schools/traditions. We can immediately discard the idea of FWBM being a genre (like metal as a whole) or a subgenre (like death or black metal), because those are broader categories with well-defined fundamental or specific traits. On the other hand, we can also dismiss the idea of it being a scene or movement, since FWBM was part of the NWOBHM scene through bands like Venom, while later acts such as Hellhammer, Bathory, and Celtic Frost belonged to the 1980s underground/extreme metal scene — a sphere that encompassed often undiferentiated speed, thrash, death and black metal.
That leaves us with the categories of style, wave, and school or tradition. I think these have more potential — though not all to the same extent. The idea of a wave, much like an era, only tells us that it was temporary, something like a trend or phase that eventually went out of fashion. But what exactly goes out of fashion? A particular way of doing things — in music, that means shared sounds, structures, techniques, or themes. This points more toward the notion of a style or perhaps a school. However, a school or tradition implies a conscious sense of identity and an active effort to preserve and cultivate that identity — which, in my view, wasn’t the case at all.
In those years — and really ever since the beginnings of hard rock and heavy metal in the late ’60s — it was more about competing to outdo each other than about consciously preserving or cultivating a particular sound. It was a vanguard ethos, not a reactionary one: bands were pushing boundaries, experimenting with speed, heaviness, and dark themes, striving to be more extreme or provocative than their peers. FWBM emerged from this drive — a raw, uncompromising style defined less by formal rules or preservation of tradition, and more by a shared pursuit of intensity, atmosphere, and transgressive energy.
So, what was carried along this primordial wave? A style. But what is a style? In music, a style is a way of playing or composing that can cut across subgenres, emphasizing certain techniques, moods, or aesthetics rather than forming a formally recognized category — unlike a well-defined subgenre such as thrash metal. As a way of delimiting sets, the term style focuses more on how the music sounds or its particular “flavor”, rather than on rigid formal definitions. More about subjective atmosphere than a checklist of objective features.
Considering the above, the idea of First Wave Black Metal as a style fits the bill much better. It cuts across metal subgenres: Venom was black/speed metal, Mercyful Fate black/heavy metal, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost a strange mix of black/hardcore/speed metal, and early Sodom black/thrash, and so on. None of these bands were “pure” black metal, with Bathory coming closest with 1987’s Under the Sign of the Black Mark — though it still featured a lot of speed/thrash elements.
So what did they share? Dark, demonic themes; a sense of rawness and oppression in their riffs; a Faustian longing in their cadences and melodies; a malignant, theatrical attitude; and, most of the time, lo-fi, gritty, cavernous production. It was the soundtrack of a grotto filled with occult mysteries, infested at its core by a horde of demons and cultists. Yet they did not have an exclusive approach to riffing or song structure compared to the broader extreme and underground metal scene, with each band occupying its own place along an extreme metal continuum. First Wave Black Metal consisted of the bands that best represented this style within extreme metal, rooted in the small set of pioneers like Venom, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, and Bathory.
So, was First Wave Black Metal a subgenre or merely a revisionist label? In reality, it was a style of extreme metal, cultivated by different extreme metal bands using satanic imagery within the cesspool of 1980s underground metal scene. Bands across the extreme metal continuum contributed to it, and the term itself was used by bands and fanzines back then to convey this dark, aggressive aesthetic — not with the strict consistency of modern hyper-categorization, but enough to identify a shared style that would shape black metal to come.
Recommended stuff:
Celtic Frost – Circle Of The Tyrants
Bathory - Total Destruction
Sarcofago - Satanic Lust
Mercyful Fate - Doomed By The Living Dead
Venom - Countess Bathory
NME - Warrior
Death SS - Kings of Evil