Unlike the so-called third wave of black metal, the mid-to-late-90s wave of black metal showcased underground metal music at its purest and most essential. Bands like Sammath, Old Wainds, Setharial, and even industrial black metal band Mysticum, highlighted the centrality of clean and driving guitar riffs and finished defining the true role of percussion in metal.
Sometimes this meant reducing percussion to a drum machine, but it never meant diminishing their importance. Sometimes this meant adding a synth layer, but it never meant adding to the music the superfluous descriptor of ‘symphonic’. Rather, the way in which the instruments folded into the thematic flow or the narrative was well-defined and proudly carried by guitars that had by then shed unnecessary ornamentation.
Sammath’s 1996 demo Zwaardbroeders Bij De Bergengte is a perfect example of end-phase black metal. We see here the briefest of interludes barely long enough to give you a hint as to what the emotional atmosphere is. We find a narrow but perceptible variety of textures decided upon by the density and intensity of the drum section. And we can also appreciate the main pillar upon which this kind of music rests: the unrelenting guitars.
Two things are to be emphasized at this point: first, that a balance has been struck between economy and expression, & second, that the music is replete with recognizable and hummable riffs. With respect to the first point, both song length and aesthetic have become economical to the point that every gesture is essential and makes the music grow. The second point is that proper metal guitar riffs are thematic.
The economy of this music enhances rather than impoverishes the music as the bulk of “raw” black metal tends to do (the latter is a topic to be explored in full elsewhere). The only constant is the guitar strumming. In and out come the vocals, in and out the drums, as do the synths. The tremolo-strummed guitar phrases with emphatic beginnings and endings keep the narrative going.
We take a moment to remember something that modern black metal is wont to forget: metal music is a guitar music, and a music of guitar riffs specifically. No amount of avant-garde, progressive, or experimental arguments will change that or make weak composition strong.
Moving on to the thematic aspect of proper riffs: they express a distinct and self-contained phrasal statement that impacts the mind enough for it to be easily remembered and “replayed” mentally. They stand out, having clear beginnings and endings that impose themselves on the music. They are the outward expression of the core flows which underpin the organized sounds we recognize as music. The inner flows whence music springs.
Sammath also arranges guitar riffs in a song as a good writer would sentences in a paragraph. You cannot just put them wherever you want and expect the outcome to be equally good. Opening riffs in Sammath songs move us into the picture Kruitwagen paints for us. Middle riffs introduce rupture points, and then others drive us forward. Sometimes songs are ended by a never-ending loop carried away by a fade out. Sometimes the ending is expressed by the finality of the music itself.
Like other black metal demos of 1994-1996, Zwaardbroeders Bij De Bergengte shows us the genre in its ultimate phase, after which musicians could either take the aesthetics, connect it with the movements of their being, and make something… or abandon it for different genres. It offers us a stoic representation of black metal music, un-religious and unapologetic, and by virtue of the flattened blade of its post-mysticism, capable of opening a wound in our souls through which the cosmos pours forth.
