Amebix released their first single, “Winter”, in 1983, marking a decisive step from their preceding releases towards a new, unique style of their own forging. This transition, encompassing not just the musical content but the lyrics and overall aesthetic as well, proved to be nothing less than a fundamental shift, for it represents a turn to a mythological mode of storytelling, dealing with archetypes rather than focusing on the contingent and immediate problems of the moment, which were the main preoccupation of most of the “outsider” musical movements seeking to “shock” the establishment. This attitude was certainly influential to the metal musicians that were exploring similar dark alleys, eventually coalescing into what we today call extreme metal: the use of myth, the atmosphere of suffocating nihilism and an uncompromising interest in the most tenebrous of topics are all crucial and recognizable hallmarks of the genre.
The band’s aesthetic blended punk roughness, the vertiginous theatricality of German Expressionism and an overall sense of apocalyptic darkness far deeper than the merely social or political pessimism that concerned most of the protest music of the time. Drawing from both their urban setting and more archaic sensibilities, Amebix show how, beneath the clinical hyper-positivity of modern consumer societies, still lurk all sorts of phantasms, vampires, cycles of predation and decay whose might towers above the highest human powers.
“The cold outside lays waste to life. Suspends the process of decay.
Alone without a friend suffer as night becomes the death of day.”
With this mythologization of the forces at play in the world, whose depths are ignored by mundane workaday existence, Amebix use images of primordial resonance (winter, the passage of seasons, day and night, death and rebirth), that remind us of rhythms and dimensions of nature that transcend us and all our petty illusions. The lyrics describe an apocalyptic scenario (one of the band’s recurring themes), evoking colossal powers ineffably beyond humanity’s control, the best response probably being a stoic resignation and maybe some preserved hopefulness (“lets hope we see it through”).
Throughout their career, Amebix continued to engage with mythological language, with a particular penchant for apocalyptic themes – for instance, the single’s B-side is titled Beginning of the End; see also their debut full-length Arise. This method played no small part in the band’s artistic success, being one of their most significant contributions to the nascent extreme metal spirit and firmly distinguishing them from the mass of punk/metal acts that dazzled themselves with a particular event or circumstance; Amebix, on the other hand, seemed to extend their intuition to the big picture, sensing the sinister, moribund odor of the zeitgeist at large.
To what extent was Amebix influential for extreme metal and not the other way around? This mythological stance you mention and its features were already being explored by Slayer at the time and slightly before.
I’m not trying to prove you wrong, I’m just curious since I can’t think right now of any major extreme metal band clearly influenced by Amebix.
Cheers!
That is true; of course, things like these are never linear and there are usually several people coming up with similar ideas at around the same time.
Although Slayer and other metal bands were obviously crucial, I do think some of the early extreme metal bands (Bathory, Hellhammer, etc) might have taken something from Amebix as well (the more overt “punkiness”, themes and imagery, etc). It’s likely a case of mutual inspiration.
Cheers!
Napalm Death and Neurosis. Both have cited Amebix as a major influence. Therefore and furthermore, all the bands who have spiraled from under the influence of those two, which is no small number, owe a nod to Amebix.