If you'll make exceptions for Burzum, you might as well make exceptions for any band that has an ideology that you don't necessarily agree with or obviously don't subscribe to. That said, it's ashame if you're crossing NS bands off your list IMO due to their radical and usually ridiculous viewpoints. There are dozens of excellent bands within that sub-genre that deserve to be heard for musical reasons alone. I can seperate myself from their message and just listen to the music, and it's not like I'm supporting them by going out and buying their entire discography in most cases or getting their logo tattooed on my back.
I pretty much agree 100% with this.
I think the reason there so much " good" NSBM being put out is the artists are pasionate about the music they make, sure they have a fucked up ideology, but they care enough about it to perform with such intensity and feeling. Case in point is Burzum, the thing which makes the band so fucking good, is Varg cared enough about he's music to pour he's heart and soul into the recordings. Varg is hardly one of the most technically proficient musicians, Hell Eurynomous did the solo on "war" for him. But he's compostions are brilliant, the music has feeling and atmosphere behind it and thats what missing from the "mainstream" BM artists today.
I'm generalising here but 90% of the BM bands around now days (and that includes formerly decent 2nd wave bands like Darkthrone, Satyricon, etc) have basically becomes parodies of themselves and the genre, being evil for the sake of being evil and releasing albums entirely devoid of intensity feeling and "atmosphere" the central tennets of good black metal. You can throw in all the blast beats all the technically proficiency you want, you're not going to have a decent bm album if it has no atmosphere. The biggest atrocity is these albums are selling. Look at fucking Dimmu Borgir, listen to their first album, now listen to their new shit, tell me which is better but look at what sells. It fucking retarded.
Now BM has reached the point mainstream people are paying attention to it and are suddenly saying, change the vocals, fix the production etc etc etc, same thing happen to thrash in the 80's (people started saying, slow down, less riffs, more melody, better production) and what did you get fucking Metallica. Now look at the "popular" Black Metal bands today and tell me the same fucking thing isn't happening to Black Metal at the moment.
I don't want to sound like one of those Jaded "Black Metal is dead" people cause its not. Theres a lot of good underground Black Metals bands out there today, hell many of them have been mentioned in this thread and a lot of them even use "modern" production, but their still innovative, intense and passionate. But all this thing about preocupations over a bands ideology and what people are and aren't prepared to listen to has pissed me off.
Now I agree National Socialism is a fucking joke. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop listening to Wagner because he was a racist and an Anti-semite and I'm not going to stop listening to Graveland for preciesly the same reason. Theres a difference between "the man" and the music.
