By high school age, I had sifted through most of the subgenres of metal, but one remained uncharted. Black metal had always seemed somewhat ethically questionable due to its occassional satanism and even more occassional far-right connections. (About the latter: the aesthetic common ground is often there, but the ideological common ground more rarely.) My gateway into black metal was a random YouTube find, a live DVD of this Irish band called Primordial. Central to Primordial's Irish sound are a slowly swaying 6/8 time signature and wall-of-sound electric guitars. The frontman of the group, Nemtheanga, is also a great illustration on the diffences between "a musician" and "an artist". He hasn't always been the most pitch-perfect singer, but his charisma is absolutely irresistable. On top of that, during my years following him on Facebook, I learnt about many great artist across various genres, many of which have become mainstays in my library:
Today's excerpt is the best performance on the DVD, "The Coffin Ships", which happens to also be Primordial's best song in my opinion. The studio version of the song can be found on the album "The Gathering Wilderness".
Primordial isn't black metal per se, but is most definitely a direct descendant of it. Also nearly all the bands I came to know via Primordial that remained on my playlists over time are descendants of black metal rather than pure black metal. The band Emperor might be the only "real" black metal band I care about. These other "black metal derivatives" include such bands as Agalloch (USA), Sólstafir (Iceland), Bathory (Sweden), and the various projects of the French musician Neige. (Side note: Neige has the best and most emotionally impactful voice among all the "unclean" vocalists.) I mentioned the countries these bands come from, because folk elemets are often very prevalent among these children of black metal. However, this is not the "cheesy" folk metal (akin to Korpiklaani, Turisas, and such) but a more somber one.
My take on Primordial: Primordial's best album is "To the Nameless Dead", but all the albums aside the very first one ("Imrama") contain at least a handful of very good songs, most often quite the handful. I also recommend seeing what music Nemtheanga aka. Alan Averill recommends. He seems to have an impeccable taste.
influence: black metal derivatives, "non-cheesy" folk metal, Agalloch, Sólstafir, Bathory, Neige
excerpt: The Coffin Ships (YouTube, intentionally timestamped link)
This post was retroactively compiled on 2024-01-19 from an old Facebook post.