Metal Monday: What If The Church Burnings In Norway Never Happened?
posted in: Features • Rock
Many years ago in a galaxy known as metal, some stuff happened that would change the course of the genre forever (but you probably knew that already). We’re here to ponder things like what if that never happened in regard to some of metal’s most momentous events and happenings”What might the metal world be like today?
Most people seem to know that there were a string of church burnings attributed to some members of Norway’s black metal scene in the early nineties (and if you’re reading this you probably have already seen my article that mentioned it from a few weeks prior). As you also likely know, the incidents were sort of a big deal for a lot of reasons. But, what if Varg and company had never gotten the itch to watch some churches burn?
Perhaps most obvious, people probably wouldn’t have scorned black metal and its musicians nearly as much. Burning sacred churches that are hundreds of years old makes people pretty stinkin’ pissed off”who knew? Without such hatred toward the scene it’s pretty unlikely that the heinous misconceptions would have been spread by the mainstream media”heck, without such extreme actions, it’s hard to even imagine black metal being covered by the mainstream media. More likely than not, the secne would have remain as underground as its death metal Scandinavian brethren in Gothenburg were during this time.
Though technically playing music and burning churches don’t involve any of the same skills, the church burnings clearly had an effect on black metal henceforth. Aesthetically the music was still remarkably similar (after all, it was still black metal), but there seemed to be a new group of people who adopted the more Satanic side of things, as opposed to those like Darkthrone or Emperor who simply embraced the individuality that black metal offered.
Since the early ’90s, black metal has gone to a lot of different places, mostly due to the progressive nature of acts like Emperor, inspiring newer bands like Wolves In The Throne Room and Throne of Malediction into being a bit more progressive with their brand of black metal. Still, there remain purists to the roots, such as Nachtmystium, a band that mostly rejects the black metal label due to their band not fitting the traditional norm.
Which path would black metal have taken if the church burnings hadn’t caused such a commotion? Would there have been such strong identification with Satanism in the scene? Would black metal even have survived in the capacity it has or gotten as much exposure in global markets in the last two decades? While it’s impossible to say what would have been different, I think guessing that things would be very different is a pretty safe bet.